R is also a statistical programming language, indirectly derived from S+. It is referred to as GNU/S by those who contribute to it, and it is released under the GPL.

As is S+, R is a very robust, and not at all user friendly, statistical platform. The reason that it is not at all user friendly is in order to allow users the maximum flexibility in constructing their models. At present, there are very few statistical computations that cannot be performed by the R system.

Given that it is a relatively new project (started in 1995, if I'm not mistaken), it is currently under very heavy development, but uses a modular architechture to allow researchers to contribute new algorithms seamlessly into the program. It works under all *NIX variants, Windows 9x, Macintosh and there are some early releases for Mac OS X.

For further information, or even to take it for a test drive, please visit http://www.r-project.org/.

R is one of the five authors (J, E, D, P, and R) of the Pentateuch or Torah (the first five books of the Bible) theorized by Biblical scholars.

R may have not have written a single word. R is short for "redactor" (editor). Around 400 BC, R spliced together the Pentateuch from the work of J, E, D, and P, which accounts for the contradictions in these books and why parts of each one were written by different people. This explains why there are two creation stories, two accounts of the Ten Commandments, and why God is referred to by different names in different parts of the same book, among other inconsistencies. What R redacted out of the Bible, if anything, remains a mystery.

R, the eighteenth letter of the English alphabet, is a vocal consonant. It is sometimes called a semivowel, and a liquid. See Guide to Pronunciation, §§ 178, 179, and 250-254. "R is the dog's letter and hurreth in the sound." B. Jonson.

In words derived from the Greek language the letter h is generally written after r to represent the aspirated sound of the Greek "r, but does not affect the pronunciation of the English word, as rhapsody, rhetoric.

The English letter derives its form from the Greek through the Latin, the Greek letter being derived from the Phœnician, which, it is believed, is ultimately of Egyptian origin. Etymologically, R is most closely related to l, s, and n; as in bandore, mandole; purple, L. purpura; E. chapter, F. chapitre, L. capitulum; E. was, were; hare, G. hase; E. order, F. ordre, L. ordo, ordinis; E. coffer, coffin.

The three Rs, a jocose expression for reading, (w)riting, and (a)rithmetic, -- the fundamentals of an education.